Wednesday, September 4, 2013

OK. So being a mom of two little girls, I have a lot of duplicate items, out-grown items or otherwise "ruined" items due to messy eating/ play/ ect.

I am always finding ways to recycle/ up cycle and mend/ repair items that most people would usually throw out. Its a skill that I have grown to love, it tests your creativity not to mention can save you lots of money in the long run. Well, my latest little project I took an old tshirt my daughter had, which was a little two long for a shirt, and too short for a dress, and made it into a little princess dress for her birthday. This was a pretty simple project, the base of the dress is the tshirt, and I just added some fun sparkly fabric, and some embellishments, to turn it into a special dress up costume.

Here is how I did it:

1. First I took the tshirt I was using and removed the whale embroidery with a seam ripper, be careful when removing machine embroidery as the littlest mishap can create tiny holes, luckily I was planning on covering up the embroidery so I first removed the whale, then mended any holes with my free-motion embroidery foot on my machine.

2. Next step I removed the top tier on the shirt, creating a "waistband" and a longer silhouette, (more of a princess dress not a babydoll top) I simply took scissors and cut the top tier off, as close to the seam as I could (instead of unpicking the seam, I just cut the ruffles off so I wouldn't have to do more sewing. I saved this material for step 3.

3. Because the top was too short as a dress, I simply attached the strip of fabric I removed from the top tier and added it to the bottom tier to create a longer "dress"

4. Next I gathered some blue sparkly knit fabric and added it ontop of the two tiers, serging then hemming the bottoms.

5. I then pinned loose pieces of fabric over the top pannels, one section on the bodice, and two on the back panels, using my sewing machine, I sewed the sides on, then trimmed any excess fabric leaving a raw edge.

6. To really secure the pieces and to add some detail, I went over the top fabric with stitching with my free-motion foot, adding some fun embellishing stitches & rows.

7. Next I created an elastic waistband by doing rows of zig zagg stitching with elastic thread on the empty "waistband" panel.

8. Last I cut out a bunch of fabric flowers, and sewed them onto the dress, layering with paillettes (from Magzoolum Beads) creating loose flower applique clusters.